NEVER ANGELINE NØRTH

TRUCK

Sara bought a truck and drove it down the road. Her doggie sat next to her and hung his head out the window. She felt so cool and useful. I WANNA HELP SOMEONE MOVE, she yelled at the sun. I WANNA HAUL A LUMBER.

Sara's dog did no yelling. He just felt the wind in his face and watched the world zoom by. I'm a situation of light! he thought. I'm a big brassy dome of solid air-muscle! Now this I could get used to. Now this I could braid into a beautiful hairstyle on the soft head of the world.

MOVIE

Sara went to a movie and all kinds of things happened on the screen. They were beautiful and strange and made her want to sit up straight and cry at the moon. What a beautiful movie!

She took her hands and left the theater and the theater flew away on wings with feathers. Goodbye theater, she said to it. I wish you all the greatest luck on your mission to get people to where they need to be.

The theater flew toward the beach and ran into a seagull. The seagull knocked out the theater and gave it a surgery. The seagull took a long tube and put it into the hole where the theater peed. Carry around this bag for awhile and don't sit down, said the seagull, and you will know true happiness. Eventually the seagull took off the wrappings and took out the tube and underneath the spot where the bandages where there was now a theater-themed gift shop.

Oh, said the theater politely. Thank you.

The theater decided to fly back to where it had been and think about things for awhile.

What an absolutely incredible movie I just saw, Sara wrote to a friend. Just mindmelting, she said as her mind leaked onto the paper.

SNAKES

Sara and her dog decided to take a vacation where they would go live in a hole full of snakes.

Ahh! said Sara when she first got there. There was a snake in front of me and I scared it and it scared me!

Sara's dog tried to eat a snake and five snakes bit him and Sara had to take him to the emergency vet and she took two of the snakes to the vet also.

When they got to the vet Sara read a magazine in the waiting room and was nervous. The magazine was about making your house beautiful but Sara thought the houses in the magazine were less beautiful than the hole full of snakes.

There was another magazine called Cloudbird 69. It didn't have any writing in it at all and all the pages were solid gray. When Sara looked at it, it made her think of a Qdoba filled entirely with feathers.

Hello, said the imaginary Qdoba employee, What can I get for you today?

Hello, said Sara. What is your name?

My name is Threes, said the Qdoba employee. What would you like to eat?

What are the names of the other people who are working right now? asked Sara.

Their names are Jaska, Borss, and Yay, said Threes, the Qdoba employee. They made spitting noises, assumedly to get some feathers out of their mouth.

I would like an order of feathers and a water, said Sara.

Easy peasy, said Threes and filled up a cup with water and handed it to Sara. You can help yourself to the feathers.

How much do I owe you, said Sara.

You don't owe anything to anyone, said Threes. Remember that.

Sara left a tip the size of a small moon. Does this tip go to Jaska and Borss and Yay also? asked Sara.

No, no, said Threes. It goes into a hole in the wall and all the money sits inside the drywall like a pile of old razors.

When Sara looked up from the magazine the vet was standing there and told her that her dog had died and so had one of the snakes. He draped a snake over her shoulders like it was an award she had won.

HEART

Sara's dog had a big heart. He got it from a blue wizard. Green wizards were the most common where they lived but blue wizards happened sometimes. One time a red wizard peed on the vegetables in Sara's garden and Sara waved a rake at it until it left.

Never Angeline Nørth is the author of the books Sea-Witch (Inside the Castle 2020), Careful Mountain (CCM, 2016), Sara or the Existence of Fire (Horse Less Press, 2014) and Wolf Doctors (Artifice Books, 2014). She lives in Olympia, WA. Undying.club